Tag Archives: Obsolete SEO

Apr 16

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If the Meta keyword tags were really important ingredients in your recipe for SEO success, Google, Yahoo, and Bing would be the first ones to let you know that you actually need them. They would try to convince you to include them inside your header and would highlight the main benefits associated with this practice. Nonetheless, in reality, Google and Yahoo have chosen to ignore Meta keyword tags. Reason: in the past 10 years, numerous webmasters have SPAMMED out and abused the meta keywords tag. What commonly happens is people with less than a thorough understanding of the way search algorithms work will put every variation of their business type in keyword form in the keywords meta tag.

Here’s an example of how webmasters spam the meta keywords tag:

Phasing Out the Meta Keywords Tag

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how spammy this Black Hat SEO technique is, and this is why major search engines like Google.com and Yahoo ignore the meta keywords tag.That still doesn’t detour webmasters and SEO amateurs from doing it though, and even today, many still are. JA Publications, Inc. does a lot of Google penalty removal services, so we see this in the course of our analysis more often than we should. Second to back link schemes, this is the most common penalizing SEO technique that we see. Keyword stuffing not only meta tags but page content and meta titles and descriptions is also common.

Since keyword Meta tags have been used in conjunction with shady website optimization tactics, most search engines have decided to ignore them and the meta keywords tag holds no SEO weight or power. Bing seems to be even more determined, and goes the extra mile to penalize website owners who count on this type of black hat SEO strategy. Bing interprets the Meta keywords tag like a spam signal. Websites that use the tag, but do not display the keywords included with it, in their page body copy, are penalized by Bing. We like that a lot! The less SPAM, the better as far as we’re concerned.